In the first week of the consultation on the next CAP, battle lines are already being drawn in Brussels by the competing interests. That is before the often fractious nature of discussions within agriculture itself really take place.

The skill that will be required to deliver a meaningful CAP reform for farmers will be EU Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan’s ability to build the alliances necessary to get the deal past his colleagues in environment and climate change whom it will be necessary to have on board in order to persuade the rest of the Commission. After that, co-decision making means the parliament has to be brought on board and the council of ministers is the final arbiter that has to be convinced.

At the launch last Thursday, the Commissioner returned to what has become a consistent theme of recent comments. He attributed the complexities of the current CAP on the first outing of co-decision process between the commission and parliament. This, he said, left all parties unhappy with the final result and there was now need for simplification.

The second set of circumstances he identified as drivers of the need for modification were the developments in trade and markets alongside climate change and environmental issues, which required modernisation of CAP.

The market failures felt by farmers in the past two years, particularly in pigs and dairy, highlighted to the Commissioner the need “to assess and improve the policy tools to support farmers in times of such crises and to make them more resilient in a globalised world.”

He also effectively accepted that the CAP has been failing farmers by recognising that it is increasingly market-orientated at a time when prevailing market conditions haven’t been favourable for farmers. He goes on to say that “a policy designed to support farmers and ensure a basic safety net and income support also provides those same farmers with the necessary instruments to deal with market volatility and price fluctuations.”

Watch an interview with Phil Hogan at the recent Navigating Global Trade conference in our video below:

All of these comments suggest the Commissioner has grasped the problems facing farmers. The skill now required is to develop a suite of measures that will address these, while at the same time keeping on board the environmental and climate change interests, both inside the Commission in their respective DGs and outside through the various lobby groups.

Addressing this, Hogan linked delivery of the climate change agreement from Paris, protection of the rural environment and sustainable development goals to the need for sustainable agricultural production in the EU. He highlighted the 22 million farmers of the EU as “the greatest resource that we have in terms of ensuring the protection and improvement of the rural environment” and went on to say that “when we ask them to raise their level of environmental ambition, it is only right that we reward them for that contribution.”

Modified

This is bringing productive farming, care of the environment and climate change measures all together in what would be a substantially modified CAP.

Are environmental and climate change interests compatible with productive agriculture?

The blunt answer is that the easiest way to reduce methane gas output from livestock is to simply reduce the number of cattle on farms across the world. Similarly, non-active farming eliminates the risk of man-made pollution of waterways or excessive use of fertiliser. Yet there has to be a trade-off with the priority of food production. There also has to be a recognition that in many areas of the world, particularly the island of Ireland, grassland is the only suitable land use. Where this is the situation, the only way to convert grass to a human food is through bovine livestock and their products of beef and milk.

There is also some evidence that common ground can be found between climate change, environment and agriculture.

Speaking at a Luke Ming Flanagan-organised event in the parliament, Artur Runge-Metzger, who is a director in the Commission’s DG Climate action, said that “reducing agriculture’s climate impacts requires a transition towards resource-efficient systems based on well-managed soils”.

In other words, the well-worn phrase that more efficient farming reduces GHG emissions.

In the same event, Patrick Worms, a senior science policy adviser with the World Agroforestry Centre, explained how he saw agriculture as not being either/or but that agriculture and forestry could sit side by side, with one enhancing the performance of the other.

Listen to an interview with Luke Ming Flanagan on this issue in our podcast below:

Listen to "Luke Ming Flanagan on LULUCF" on Spreaker.